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> That's an unjustified qualification. I could throw together a spreadsheet format that is all text. The spreadsheet GUI then becomes a advanced text editor that, when editing that particular format, exposes advanced content-aware controls not at all unlike advanced text editors like emacs can for s-expressions.

If you could invent a text format that could be efficiently edited with a basic text editor then I would agree it's a DSL. But I feel like you would lose a lot by dropping a dedicated GUI, e.g.:

- horizontal scrolling of columns, adding, hiding columns

- "smart copying" a formula by scrolling down

- selection of rows/columns/cells

I don't think anybody would use such DSL using a basic editor.

Overall it's discussion about the definitions of terms, but I don't understand why people want to capture anything having some "editable format" as a "DSL" when addtional terms like "visual programming" allow more differentiation?




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